Archive for Chris Davis

ADP – Draft Position Consistency

Average Draft Position or ADP is very valuable. I weighed NFBC’s ADP into my personal NFBC Draft Champion rankings equally to my position-adjusted composite projections (Baseball HQ combined with RotoChamp composites (Steamer, ZIP’s, etc.)) and the results were great. I used this, our pitcher arsenal scores and these hitter analytics  as my three main draft tools.

I wanted to take evaluating draft position one step further. I want to understand how consistent each player is drafted near their ADP.

Howard Bender, who manages Mock Draft Army provided me with the raw draft results of 19 expert drafts (NFBC format: 2c-1b-2b-3b-ss-ci-mi-5of-9p). It’s not the largest sample, but they are expert drafts, and the drafts that I have taken part in definitely provided great references.

The Approach:

Read the rest of this entry »


Mock Draft Review and Best of the Rest

Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

Read the rest of this entry »


Bust Candidates According to Steamer

I ran the 2015 Steamer projections through Zach Sanders’ Fantasy Value Above Replacement system and compared the results to early ADP data. Below I’ve got a player at each position that the Steamer projections think are unlikely to live up to their draft day price.

Read the rest of this entry »


Updated Hitter Shift Data: Effect on xBABIP

It’s official. 100% of my value is bothering @jeffwzimmerman to run data and then use that data for said content. I did just that this morning for updated shift data. I believe the last time he posted related content on RotoGraphs was here back in May looking at: Early Hitter Shift Data.

It was because of this post and his balls in play (groundball and pop-up rates) that led me to believe Albert Pujols was going to drop off/continue his downward trend. I guess I pushed out the fact that he was the best hitter of his generation. While the .375 BABIP (from the above link) against shifts did not last, he’s at a very respectable .284. Between this and additional discipline (best contact rate since 2008 and hacking less at stuff outside of the zone), he is able to hover around a .280 BA, which remains elite in conjunction with 30HR, 90R and 100+RBI.

Read the rest of this entry »


Verifying xBABIP potential

On 9/3, I posted Adjusting Fantasy Value with expected (x)BABIP and xHR. These were used to adjust batting average, OBP, SLG and OPS for your different leagues’ formats.

Based on xBABIP, Michael Brantley and Anthony Rendon jumped in value sandwiching in Mike Trout as the top 3 adjusted Fantasy Values for standard 5×5 formats (HR, SB, R, RBI and AVG).

Here, I’ll attempt to verify the BABIP potential for standard 5×5 leagues. I am therefore using column 2 (sum of the 5×5 descriptive/actual z-scores: HR, SB, R, RBI and AVG) and comparing it to column 3 (sum of the 5×5 expected z-scores: xHR, SB, R, RBI and xAVG). SB, R and RBI are not adjusted even though they should be so consider this a way to play down the overall effect.

Read the rest of this entry »


Adjusting Fantasy Value with xBABIP and xHR: AVG/OBP/OPS League Rankings

I’m going to use all things @jeffwzimmerman for this post.

First is xBABIP. During this past offseason, Jeff found an xBABIP equation which correlated better than just BABIP year to year with the use of new Inside Edge data and player speed scores. I believe his last full updated list was posted on July 25th of this season, but he and the team provided me with an updated list this morning in order to use the data to interpret expected(x)FantasyValue vs. actual/descriptive(a)FantasyValue.

Read the rest of this entry »


Differences in Daily Scoring Systems — Hitters

Unless you live under a rock, you’re likely aware that DraftStreet was recently bought out by DraftKings. Given that this time slot was previously designated for the discussion of daily strategy for Draftstreet contests, I’ve got to come up with some new material. But I’m going to milk the DraftStreet cow for all it’s worth and draw on it as a source of material for one more week. Because you can no longer play on Draftstreet, I want to take a look at how the scoring systems differ on the two sites you most likely transferred your money to, DraftKings and FanDuel. Today we’ll look at how the differing scoring systems affect hitters. Read the rest of this entry »


The Orioles Infield

The Baltimore infield gave us quite a few fantasy relevant options last year. They had a player finish inside the top 12 at every position other than second base, and Chris Davis emerged as a complete stud. Their four fantasy relevant guys will return to their positions, but there are some questions about whether they’ll be able to repeat their value from last year.

Read the rest of this entry »


RotoGraphs Audio: The Sleeper and The Bust 02/12/2014

Episode 93

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette joins Eno Sarris to preview the Baltimore Orioles and the San Diego Padres

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music

Approximately 61 min of joyous analysis.

ADP results from NFBC

01:00:37

Chris Davis: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

According to our end of season valuations, Chris Davis was not only the most valuable first baseman but also the most valuable player in the game. And that’s just based on production. When you consider his draft day price and ADP, he’s probably one of the greatest values in the history of fantasy baseball. It’s obvious he won’t be able to repeat the draft day value, but if he is going to live up to his draft day value next year, he’ll have to produce similarly. Can he? Read the rest of this entry »